The post - Sampur prospect

by Dayan Jayatilleka

On the 5th anniversary of 9/11, the Global War on Terror has some good news from Sri Lanka. Unfortunately it has not been so understood by the international community nor communicated as such by the Sri Lankan authorities.

Dr. Henry Kissinger famously said that so long as the army is not winning, it is losing, but as long as the guerrillas are not losing they are winning. Well the good news is that in Sri Lanka the army is winning and the guerrillas are losing.

LTTE and Hezbollah

Sampur shows once again that the LTTE is no Hezbollah and Prabhakaran is not in the same class as Hassan Nasrallah. In relative terms the Sri Lankan armed forces have done better than the Israeli Defence Forces this time out in Lebanon.

It could be argued that Hezbollah's strength derives in some measure from the support it receives from Syria and Iran, but then again, Nasrallah regarded the Syrian forces in Lebanon as an ally and rearguard while Prabhakaran waged war against the Indian peacekeeping forces, and Nasrallah would never have been stupid enough to order a suicide bomber to murder an Iranian leader, while Prabhakaran ordered the murder of Rajiv Gandhi!

The bottom line though is that the two struggles are entirely different. Though some of its most recent methods - rocketing of Israeli cities - are not justifiable, Hezbollah's cause is justifiable because it seeks to defend its country from an invading foreign army.

Prabhakaran's cause is unjust in that he seeks to carve out a separate country from one that exists. The Israeli army's cause and methods are unjust in that it invades and occupies independent countries, while the Sri Lankan armed forces' cause is just in that they seek to defend their country from dismemberment, save its unity and protect its territorial integrity.

There are times when the Sri Lankan side has used methods and hit targets, the justice and legitimacy of which are questionable, but the cause and character of the war it wages are just and legitimate.

Lanka no Lebanon

Since the Sri Lankan and Israeli cases cannot be compared, the nature of the wars and the eventual outcomes will certainly differ. This is why there are Security Council Resolutions calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, while there are none such in the case of Sri Lanka.

The Sinhalese didn't arrive on the island in the twentieth century after a prolonged Diaspora. The Israelis can and must be made to withdraw from occupied territories. The Sinhalese are not going anywhere from a land they have always been in and were the first to be in.

This is no Sinhala chauvinist (let alone Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist) myth. The World Factbook of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, in an entry last updated on August 22, 2006, has this to say: "The Sinhalese arrived in Sri Lanka late in the 6th century B.C., probably from northern India.... In the 14th century, a south Indian dynasty seized power in the north and established a Tamil kingdom."

While the LTTE's cause is totally different from that of the Hezbollah, its performance compares unfavourably even with that of a fellow secessionist guerrilla movement, the Eritrean EPLF, which actually achieved its independent country. Thus Prabhakaran is not only no Hassan Nasrallah, he is no Isaiyas Aferwerki, leader of Eritrea.

Prabhakaran's Plan

What this means is that Prabhakaran's post-Sampur thinking will run something along the following lines, as already signalled by S. P. Thamilchelvan's bloodcurdling threat to the Sinhala people as a whole (which has yet to be condemned by the tender souls of the National Anti War Movement, CPA, NPC, Sri Lanka First et al!):

* Terror bombings, which cause large-scale civilian casualties in the Sinhala heartland, combined with the assassination of key or popular figures in the military, government and public spheres. * This would be specifically intended to trigger a July '83 situation even on a smaller scale. In this information age, a mini-July '83 would be flashed around the world and be adequate for Prabhakaran's purpose.

* Provoke the Sri Lankan armed forces into indiscriminate retaliatory strikes against civilian targets, or into an over-hasty offensive in the North, which, if launched without adequate planning, men and equipment, would be more difficult than in the multiethnic East. * A sufficiently large number of Tamil civilian casualties and horrifying incidents as a result of an ethnic pogrom or military action or both, would cause Tamil Nadu to bubble over.

* This would lever New Delhi to move against Sri Lanka.

In other words, the plan that worked for Prabhakaran in the 1980s and got him off the hook during Operation Liberation (Vadamaarachchi, 1987).

Federalism's Foreign Factors

Meanwhile the production of a devolution package must be speeded up. Time must not be wasted by the intelligentsia, speculating about 'confederations' (some play so fast and loose as to advocate a 'loose confederation'!) and 'ISGAs' as these extremist slogans will never be entertained by the masses, who do not share the anarcho-nihilism of the peacenik professoriat towards the Sri Lankan state.

Even if the parliamentary arithmetic made it feasible - which is not the case - Sri Lanka should not institute a full, ' liberal' or classic federalism.

By its recent conduct Tamil Nadu has reminded that it must be permanently regarded as a potential threat by Sri Lanka and that the Sri Lankan armed forces will always have to maintain a strong presence on our perimeter, i.e. in the Northeast. Fidel Castro once said that after China's invasion of Vietnam, even if the USA were to turn socialist, little Cuba would have to maintain its defences against her enormous Northern neighbour.

President Rajapakse's special envoy has reassured New Delhi that Sri Lanka does not have Pakistani pilots.

He might have added that we also do not have politicians and political parties openly demonstrating for a separate state in any part of India, while Nedumaran and Vaiko call for a Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka! It is shameful that India permits the flaunting of support in Tamil Nadu for a man, Prabhakaran, and a movement, the LTTE, which murdered Shri Nehru's grandson on Tamil Nadu soil!

There is too great a danger that even a non-Tiger Tamil administration with excessively fulsome federal powers will regard Tamil Nadu rather than the rest of Sri Lanka as its home country. What if Quebec were separated from France by only a narrow strip of water rather than a vast ocean? India's present posture of self-paralysis does not serve its interests in the least.

If Prabhakaran prevails it has a Tamil Eelam on its doorstep exercising an emotional pull on and functioning as a beacon for some strata in Tamil Nadu. Jaffna and Kilinochchi are after all much closer to Chennai and Madurai than is New Delhi! If the Sri Lankan side prevails and imposes a 'victor's peace', then disaffection in Tamil Nadu grows.

India's best option is to extend effective support to Colombo to do the job while pushing for devolution as the price for that support: the old Kissingerian principle of linkage.

What is most prudent for Sri Lanka is to institute British-style devolution, Chinese-type regional autonomy or Indian model quasi-federalism, which do not permit affiliations with Tamil Nadu and consequently the crystallisation of a separate state by osmosis - yet contains a sufficiency of powers to end the alienation of the Tamil people from the Sri Lankan polity.

A country can die either from an absence or an excess of sub-state/sub-national autonomy. The UNP, CBK's ex-Sudu Nelumites and the NAWF are aware of the former fact but not the latter, while the JVP-JHU-Manel Mal Movement are aware of the latter but not the former. In the matter of Tamil autonomy as in many things, the Middle Path - of adequacy rather than absence or excess - is to be commended.